I would like to know more about why one would bother making partitions on a hard drive. I understand that you might want to dual boot your machine, but are there more interesting applications to partitioning?

Would it be beneficial to have an alternative file-system on hand?
Would partitioning serve well for large and specific collections of data?
Are some file-systems more powerful than others?

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You partition when you need to partition, it's that simple.
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Tom WijsmanMar 11 '12 at 12:54

3 Answers
3

"Whole drive encryption" often means whole partition encryption. A person may want to partition a drive and encrypt one of those partitions but not the other. They may store the more sensitive data on the encrypted partition.

For example, in Linux, you can separate your "/home" (containing your personal data) and "/" (containing system files) into two partitions. Then if your system breaks down, you can just format "/" and reinstall without disturbing your personal files, even without removing your preferences for each application. You can even change distro, without reconfiguring most apps.

The most beneficial thing: If one of your partition breaks down due to bad blocks or some other physical errors, your data on other partition will NOT be affected.